On Tuesday, December 3, 2024, Călin Georgescu was present in the studio of the website “Gândul” at a show by Marius Tucă.Live, the candidate for the position of head of the Romanian state denied that he had ever promoted the Legionary Movement or any extremist movement.
And yet, Călin Georgescu came to Tucă’s show, where he denied having any connection with the legionary movement, accompanied by Eugen Sechila, one of the most well-known leaders of the new legionnaires in Romania.
The images from Tuesday, with Georgescu and Sechila sitting in an office before the show, in the editorial office, were broadcast by “Gândul” itself, when it was promoting its live broadcast that was about to begin.Producer Marius Tucă was also in the same room.
The sequences were noticed by Oana Marinescu, a former journalist and the one who in recent years ensured communication for the George Enescu Festival.
Călin Georgescu, Eugen Sechila and Elena Puiu. Photo: Facebook
Along with Elena Puiu, Sechila is the leader of the “Association of Gogu Puiu and the Outlaws of Dobrogea.”The association was banned in schools in Romania after authorities had evidence of the legionary propaganda that Sechila and Puiu were practicing among students.
On the Facebook page of Sechila’s association, several texts were published that paid tribute to Corneliu Zelea Codreanu: “Before Corneliu Codreanu, Romania was a populated Sahara. Those between heaven and earth had no content, except waiting. Someone had to come”.
This is exactly the rhetoric of the “called one”, which Călin Georgescu is promoting in the electoral campaign.
On the evening after winning the first round of the presidential elections, Georgescu spoke to Romanians: “Therefore, my dears, I thank you once again for the call to which you responded, for the call that I addressed to you for a work of all of us and together with God”.
Georgescu’s companion and advisor on the show, Sechila also uses the idea of the “called one” on social networks and frequently participates in actions, rallies and manifestations of Romanian proto-legionarism.He receives congratulations as a “comrade”, a phrase frequently used by legionnaires during the interwar period.
Sechila poses and posts on Facebook symbols of the Legionary Movement and appears armed with rifles and pistols.He was a soldier in the Foreign Legion.
In a 2020 interview, published on the Facebook page of the “Gogu Puiu and the Outlaws of Dobrogea” Association, Călin Georgescu declares himself against the law that prohibits legionnaires. “I want to tell you one thing, those who promoted this law or support it are practically weaklings, traitors of the country and faith and must be treated as such” “And I emphasize that if they passed this law, it is the purest proof, not only of blasphemy, but of the fear they have when they say it: that you say Gogu Puiu, that you say Gheorghe Manu, that you say Ogoreanu, they are afraid of them.Because they have kept the dignified spirit of this nation”. “And I ask you, or I ask the Romanian people, why did they pass this law?They passed it practically against those who built the Romanian nation, you realize!“So, history cannot be erased, as some believe, even if they are in power. But I emphasize that they do not have the authority of power, the authority is given only by God.”
A report by the Elie Wiesel Institute this year talks about the connections of the “Gogu Puiu and the Outlaws of Dobrogea” Association with the neo-legionary movement: “The “Gogu Puiu and the Outlaws of Dobrogea” Association continued to organize outlaw camps, carried out by former Foreign Legion soldiers such as Eugen Sechila, camps about which the investigative press has repeatedly shown that they combine physical and ideological training, rehabilitating ideas and characters from the legionary past. One such camp took place between November 16-19, 2023, bearing the name of the legionary Constantin Oprișan, leader of the Brotherhoods of the Cross.”
Sechila advocates arming Romanians, because this way, “the rulers would no longer be able to make fun of us.”
Sechila’s paramilitary camps, promoted by Cristela, Călin Georgescu’s wife
Sechila was the initiator of the “youth survival camps” (called outlaw camps).Sechila’s camps were promoted, in 2022, by Călin Georgescu’s wife, Cristela, in a dialogue that can be seen on Cristela Georgescu’s YouTube account.
Cristela Georgescu reported here how her two sons, Petru and Pavel, participated in such a survival camp, organized by the former legionnaire.She reported that the boys returned from the survival camp changed: they were no longer afraid, they ate less and they became much more disciplined. Cristela Georgescu expressed her dissatisfaction in this interview that young people spend too much time on social networks and that they need such initiations.
The “survival camps”, as Cristela Georgescu calls them on the show, were far-right indoctrination and propaganda actions, according to documentation conducted by researcher Adina Marincea in recent years. After publishing extensively about the connections between Călin Georgescu and the proto-legionnaires in Romania, including the couple Eugen Sechila – Elena Puiu, Marincea was threatened.The researcher’s name was written in paint on buildings in central Bucharest. William Totok, a correspondent for Free Europe, revealed that Sechila’s “outlaw camps” have a pronounced paramilitary character, but also legionary indoctrination.